[Philoslothical]

Buy a cheap m series 50mm f1.7? If it's still soft, it has to be the camera lol.

Or the technique. I mean no offense by that, but realistically, I think half the shots he posted there is absolutely nothing wrong with that couldn't be fixed in post, and his technique would evolve with time and effort. What @kh1234567890 did with one of OP's shots is a good example. That doesn't look at all soft to me, it's a nice shot once tweaked a bit.

[New Englander]

The mushroom shot is as taken out of the camera in jpeg, no tweaking. Perhaps the lens sucks at longer than 50mm and is
only best used 18-50?

[hcarvalhoalves]

What is exactly wrong with those pictures? They are fine for me. What you mention as "soft" is simply the fact depth-of-field is so thin that half the mushroom is already out-of-focus. If that's not what you expected, you should have used Av mode and controlled your aperture.

Tip: You'll fool yourself if you expect JPEGs out of the camera to be NatGeo-grade just because you are using a DSLR. The DSLR just gives you more tools compared to a compact camera, but if you don't work your technique, or if you are not willing to post-process your images, you can't expect much more than that. In that case you'll do just well with any modern compact since they are lighter, cheaper and deliver excellent quality already.

[New Englander]

Perhaps I'm expecting too much. Guess I was looking for the sharpness that I had with my ME Super SLR.
K, I will work on it for a while and see how it goes. Thanx for everyone's input.

[Philoslothical]

K, I will work on it for a while and see how it goes.

Good choice. I really think that's all you need. It's really good advice above to pick up a cheap but good prime, too. Even the Pentax A 50mm f./2 is no slouch, despite some people having a grudge against it. It's slightly slower, 1/3 of a stop, but it's like $20 - and you can control its aperture from the camera.

Also, don't be afraid to stop down if the light allows. You seem to want a lot of depth of field, so stopping down to f./16 or so can really help with that. Just watch that your shutter speeds don't drop too much, or you'll get soft results due to camera shake.

[Bonobo]

i'm with @Philoslothical in almost all his advice, for what it's worth.

[kh1234567890]

Old thread comes to bite back

Looking at all of those shots New Englander had posted across the various threads, there is something up. Lens, camera, technique - hard to tell from these downsized shots.

Take this one for example - https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/179449-sigma-tamro...ml#post1872967. At 36mm, f7.1 and 1/60 it should be sharp from some 9 meters to infinity, the shutter speed is also fast enough. But it isn't.

The only way to sort this out is for NE to post full size shots with EXIF intact somewhere. Or at least post 1:1 crops here. I suspect that NE had fiddled with the focus calibration so that his camera now badly front focuses.

Is it that hard to tape some newspaper to a wall and take a few shots both straight on and at an angle ?

[twitch]

1/60 is far too slow for truely sharp handheld pics. At best the hit rate for sharp photos will be signficantly reduced by shooting at those speeds.

[v5planet]

Looking at the links to other threads you've posted in with example shots, I honestly have to say I don't think there's a problem with your camera. I look at the photos and it seems like most of the issues are related to using too narrow a depth of field or focusing on the wrong spot. Possibly you are using shutter speeds that are too long in some other instances, I'm not sure, I didn't see the EXIF.

As others have already said, P&S cameras have extremely deep depth of field (due to their sensor size and also their typically quite wide angle lenses). If you are not familiar with that terminology, there are many instructive resources in these forums and the broader internet that can offer better explanations than me. The other thing P&S cameras typically do is spit out jpegs with heinously aggressive sharpening algorithms applied. If that's the look you want, a P&S will do it best -- dslrs struggle with this kind of photography unless you stop way down, in which case you either need:
a) lots of light or
b) a stable tripod and some way to trigger the exposure without introducing camera shake (a timer, or a remote)

DSLRs are complicated beasts, and they cannot read your mind. In many respects, P&S cameras are far better at judging the ambiguities of a scene and choosing what to do for you, because they are explicitly designed to produce results with minimal thought from the user. Forgive me if that sounds harsh, but at the end of the day a camera system is just a set of tools, and a dSLR will typically try to get out of your way so you can take the photo you want to. In other words, it defers to you, and you need to be comfortable and confident speaking its language. If you put in the time and effort to learn the strengths, limits, and creative potential of a dSLR system, the caliber of photo you will be able to take will blow P&S results out of the water, period.

In time you learn to anticipate what your camera will produce given your settings, your subject, and the shooting conditions. If you're serious about taking creative control of your photography, it's a struggle well worth having.

[lonoise]

Old thread comes to bite back

Looking at all of those shots New Englander had posted across the various threads, there is something up. Lens, camera, technique - hard to tell from these downsized shots.

Take this one for example - https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/179449-sigma-tamro...ml#post1872967. At 36mm, f7.1 and 1/60 it should be sharp from some 9 meters to infinity, the shutter speed is also fast enough. But it isn't.

The only way to sort this out is for NE to post full size shots with EXIF intact somewhere. Or at least post 1:1 crops here. I suspect that NE had fiddled with the focus calibration so that his camera now badly front focuses.

Is it that hard to tape some newspaper to a wall and take a few shots both straight on and at an angle ?

+1

Post some full size pics. Try doing some test landscape shots at f16 or so, using a tripod, focused manually to infinity.

[New Englander]

kh1234567890:

Instead of newspaper I took a pic of my electric meter.
exif is: iso 400 / 60mm / f8 / 1250
Auto - focus fine adjustment set to "off".
Should it be on? If I put it the "on" position, the scale shows +/- 0.
Does this mean that focus calibration is ok?

[New Englander]

Another taken today:
400...31mm...f8...1/800...tripod.
yes, it's underexposed.

[twitch]

Are you saying you are unhappy with these photos? They look fine to me especially for JPEGs taken with a 18-135 zoom

If you want sharper than this then you need to look at primes lenses, better zooms (ie DA* zooms), shooting RAW, and appropriate PP. None of these things has anything to do with K-r vs K-5.

[New Englander]

The one of the meter I think is fine. I posted it for kh1234567890 to show that I don"t think the focus calibration is off.

Twitch, I see you own the 55-300. Like it? If I keep the Kr was thinking of getting it for extra reach.

[Sagitta]

New Englander, what part of New England are you in? I have a couple spare primes you can borrow if you're anywhere close to central Maine. The 50mm's I have are both razor sharp even wide open, so they'd be a good way to see if it actually is a body issue or not.

EDIT: You could probably grab a basic free Flickr account as well. For your need (a place to load up photos and share 'em) it should be more then decent for having a place to use to link photos from. As a plus, your EXIF should stay intact and we could scope out your settings you're using that way from there.